


Autumn Wins You Best

by rivendellrose



Category: Hellboy (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-07
Updated: 2012-10-07
Packaged: 2017-11-15 20:38:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/531444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivendellrose/pseuds/rivendellrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Autumn wins you best by this its mute</i><br/><i>Appeal to sympathy for its decay.</i><br/>- Robert Browning</p><p>Samhain fic, of a rather traditional variety.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Autumn Wins You Best

Among pagans and spiritualists, it’s called a ‘dumb feast.’ In principle, the ritual is simple. On Halloween night - All Hallow’s Eve, the night when the veil between the living and the dead is reputed to be at its thinnest - one sets out an extra place at the evening table and welcomes the dead who might visit and partake. As spells go, it isn’t much of anything. A little bread, a little water, perhaps some cheese or whatever else the family might be eating. A few words, if the person setting it up feels the need. Perhaps a candle or two. The trick, as with so many spells, is less in getting attention and more in getting the attention of the _correct_ spirit - the one the meal is intended for - rather than whoever or whatever happens to pass by. But as far as the literature is concerned, it seems that the desired result is usually achieved.

In theory, Abraham Sapien knows better than to toy with magic. He’s not a sorcerer or a medium, despite his ability to read the emotional echoes attached to objects or to sense the emotions and state of a nearby person. As far as he know, it’s not supernatural but instead perfectly natural to... whatever he is. Whether or not _that_ in and of itself is supernatural is an entirely different question, very much up to individual debate. But the principle remains sound - he’s always been one to leave the psychic and metaphysical realms to those who know more about it than he does.

Always until now.

If Red knew what he was doing, Abe thought, he would be furious. For that matter, so would Liz, and so, if he were still alive, would Professor Bruttenholm. Krauss might understand, Abe suspects, remembering the weight of a beaded purse in his hands and the delicate, lady-like stitches that had traced a letter “K” onto the rich red velvet. But even he would insist that Abe was being foolish - not at all like himself. Possibly in need of a vacation - perhaps, he can almost hear his friend suggesting, these last months have put too much strain on him. 

They have, indeed, been a strain. But a good part of that strain, for the last few weeks at least, has been waiting for this night.

The match struck, Abe hesitates just a moment before lighting the wick of a fat beeswax candle. It catches, flickers for a moment, and then rises, strong. He watches it for a moment, then shuts the glass and metal doors of the lantern around it and picks up the wooden handle, carrying it out into the night. 

The guards pay him no attention as he stands in the gateway, holding the lantern aloft. BPRD guards have seen far stranger, and they all know better than to gawk at the special agents, no matter what odd things they do. He waits, feeling the cold prickle on his skin, and watches as the last of the sunlight bleaches out of the sky, leaving it a blue as dark as the deepest ocean. For a moment, lulled by quiet and the sleepy chill that’s begun to fall over him, he thinks how nice it would be to swim in water that deep, to lose himself completely into it - forget the world above, and never come back. He never could - he has responsibilities here, particularly now that Liz and Red’s babies are so close to being born - but the thought is at times more tempting than he would really like to admit. The Human world seems, more and more, to be empty for him of late. Tonight, he hopes, he will catch a glimpse of what he’s missing.

Just as he’s beginning to doubt, as the dark blue above him changes to ink and the first icy stars begin to glow in the heights not touched by the lights of the bureau compound and the nearby city, she comes. A white shadow, inverted on the darkness of the path, she walks slowly, as if unsure, and then... yes, seems to see him. A tilt to her head, a certain attentiveness in her posture, and then, as she nears the gate, the softest hint of a smile touches pale lips and warms her features in the darkness. The wisps of her hair that slip out from under her hood look like the first frost crystalizing on pale petals. 

For him, perhaps, she was the first flower of the season, but for herself - for the world - she is the last fading blossom of fall. A chill that has nothing to do with the weather runs down his spine, and he wonders - not for the first time - whether this was really the right thing to do. Too late to question his decision, though, as she mounts the steps and pushes back her hood. 

“You came,” he says, feeling lame and foolish. She does that to him, he remembers wistfully - she’s always taking the words from his lips, making everything he says sound hollow and foolish by comparison to her own quiet dignity.

She nods slowly, but the smile on her lips is oddly sad. She touches his arm - or at least he thinks she does. Her hand is as insubstantial as the wind. He shudders at its chill.

“I have food... I wasn’t sure...”

She nods emphatically, and he shows her the way to the little table set up in the library. He’s laid out bread and apples there, as well as some nuts and sliced cheese and a thermos of hot apple cider. He wasn’t sure about the last, but it seemed strange to have food with no drink, and water seemed too Lenten, too much like a mourning feast. He supposes that’s what this is, but finds he would prefer very much not to think of it that way. It’s more like a reunion, he tells himself, and in the joy of seeing her again, he can almost believe it. 

Seeing her, though, is hardly enough. 

“I’m sorry it’s so simple...” he begins, but she’s already grabbed up one of the cups and regarding him with an expression he can only term pleading. He fills it with the cider, and is at once pleased and somewhat horrified to see her swallow it all in one long, almost desperate pull. He fills it again, and then again before she at last slows, an expression of bliss washing over her features. It pulls at his heart, to see her so ecstatic over something as simple as a hot drink.

“Thank you.” Her voice is thin and scratchy. It sounds like... like what it is - a rattling whisper from beyond the grave. 

“Is it...” Abe trails off. _Is it what?_ he thought. _Is it really so bad, being dead? Is your throat parched, your very blood frozen and her heart still as a stone, as the grave?_ “I’m sorry,” he mumbles miserably. “I’m so sorry, Nuala, I--”

“Abraham, no...” Her voice is still a whisper - was it always like that? - but it doesn’t rasp anymore, doesn’t sound as dry as dead leaves and the raking of branches.

“I did this. I failed you. I wanted so much to help you, to protect you, but... And then I called you here again, made you--” The full extent of his actions are beginning to sink in on him, now that they’re complete. Wherever she was before, Nuala was dead. Calling her back for this feast wouldn’t change that - this was no spell to raise the dead, and he was no such powerful sorcerer to do that, even if it were possible. “I’m sorry, Nuala, I--”

“ _No._ ” She sets aside the mug, and fills its place between her palms with one of his hands, grasped tightly. Or at least she tries to. He can still feel _something_ , but it’s not flesh, and he senses nothing from it. She isn’t really there. But when he looks in her eyes they are as golden and bright as ever, and he thinks that might be enough. “Don’t apologize, Abraham. I would not have come tonight if I hadn’t truly wanted to. You are not so powerful a sorcerer as to summon me unwilling. I wanted to be here. Tonight. With you.”

He lets out a soft sigh of laughter, and shakes his head. “I don’t know... any of this, Nuala. All of it is new to me.” 

“And to me.” She releases his hand and touches his cheek with insubstantial fingertips. All over again, he remembers how overwhelmed he felt with her when they were together - her beauty, the gentle rhythm of her heart beating, so slow compared to a human, and her stillness, the silence she keeps like a breath caught and held before flight, before falling, before jumping into deep water. She always seemed then as she is now - as though she held herself poised, ready, waiting.

Waiting... for him to make the next move, he realizes, and reaches for something to say, something to do, anything to push the moment on. “I have food ready, if you’d like...”

“Yes, thank you.” 

He busies himself slicing bread and apples for a moment, and pretends not to notice as she wanders over to the bookshelf, trailing insubstantial fingers over the spines until she finds the same worn blue hardcover edition of Tennyson’s poems. The other night, the first night they met, seems to rise up in front of him as a living memory, and he almost feels as though he could step into it now and change everything. If he’d kept talking to her rather than letting her wander off to her own little room - if he’d stayed with her, rather than letting his cowardly nerves get the better of him and then wallowing in alcohol and self-pity... 

Then what? 

He is no fool. He knows he, alone, could not have been a match for her brother. But if he hadn’t been so in need of company and comfort, if Red hadn’t gotten drunk with him, if they’d known right away when Nuada appeared rather than not finding out until Nuala’s last, desperate decision to set off the alarm... maybe it all could have been different. 

Maybe she didn’t have to die. Maybe...

In the world of reality - as much as this night could be reality - Nuala is watching him, a vaguely amused smile touching her lips. “You were so brave, Abraham,” she says softly. “So brave to call me back.”

“Well, I... I mean, what else...” He trails off, his fingers tracing a map of all the thousand words he thinks he might say, but which all sound wrong as he’s caught in the brilliant gold of her eyes.

“I haven’t much time, Abraham. At dawn... I’ll have to leave.” She looks up at him, and he’s struck suddenly by how close she is suddenly. He’s sure they’ve never stood this close before - he’s not sure _how_ she came to be this close, come to that, from standing at the bookshelf a moment before. His skin tingles as though with cold, while his gills flutter madly as though overheated. “I’ll have to leave this world, and go back to the other.”

“Ah. Yes. Dawn. It’s... er... traditional,” he agrees vaguely, too lost in her eyes to come up with other words. They’re not really gold, he thinks - they’re yellow, like birch leaves before they fall. Bright and beautifully stark against the bone-white of her hair and the chilled porcelain of her skin. He feels like he’s falling into them, drowning in a sea of gold, like looking up at the sky earlier that evening into the ocean of stars, but this is so much more than that. So much deeper, so much more compelling. Not just a passing fancy, but a need, wild and determined, as though he’ll never breath comfortably again until he’s lost in her. Surely nothing has ever been so important.

“We never have had much time, have we?” Nuala asks. “You and I. I thought time was endless, before - it seemed to stretch in front of me, year after year, with no stopping in sight. The cycle of years rolling onward forever. But then I finally have something real to live for...and then it was over.”

“I feel the same way,” Abe admits in a rush. “I never knew how to explain it to you, but--”

“Then come with me.” She holds out her hand, and he can feel his own rising in response to it.

 _Yes_. It's all he wants in the world, to be with her again, so... why not? What is there here that mattered so much? Red and Liz have each other and their coming children, Krauss has the team well in hand... what is there left for Abe to do, other than keep working as he always had, unnoticed and unregarded, until someday a job went too far wrong, a monster was too strong, or until whatever magic or misfortune had created him simply wore out? Why not give it all up and leave, and spend eternity with the one perfect being he’d loved so dearly? 

“Come with me, when I leave at dawn. We can be together forever - you and I. It will be perfect, with no one to come between us. Spring-time forever, no winter to part us.” She touches his skin, and this time he can almost feel it against the skin of his cheek. Warm and living and soft, she smells faintly of jasmine.

He steps forward, and as he does his hand brushes against something cold on Professor Bruttenholm’s old desk. Cold metal. Cold and hard... like her hand. It freezes the flesh where it touches. In an instant, the spell is broken.

“Nuala, don’t -- no. No. This isn’t right.”

Nothing is right. It would have been a comfort if her face had changed - if she had become a demon of some kind, a horrible wraith or revenant that he could clearly say was not the woman he’d loved. If the white of her skin had gone dingy and pocked, if her eyes had rolled back in her head or glowed with fiery malevolence... any of the thousand and one horrors he’s seen from wights and ghosts in his long days at the bureau would have been a relief to him in that moment. But no such reprieve was to be had. She is as beautiful as before, but cold - a mockery carved in ice where the Nuala he knew had been so warm, so much a creature of the living world even as she was not quite of the world of Man. 

“But... we could be together,” she murmurs. "It would all be right, then..."

“I loved you... I still love... No. I loved Nuala. But you are not her.”

The expression on her face then was familiar to him, though he was sure he’d never seen it in life - that bitterness, that twisted look of disgust and disdain, was surely nothing he’d seen on the Nuala he’d known. And yet he knew it - it was the look her brother had turned on him, on all of them, so many times. It chilled Abe’s heart to see it from her. “ _You_ called me here, Abraham. You begged me to leave the rest I was due. And you fed me the food of the Human world. If I am changed, it is _your_ fault.”

Paranoia and guilt take over where her accusing yellow eyes leave off. He can’t be certain - of course he can’t. This could as easily truly be Nuala as it could some other, unknown spirit who caught a ride into the world when he called for her. And what if that was true? Would it change what he had to do?

“Go. Please.” 

“Abraham?” He can't look at her - her voice is thick with tears, and if he sees that, he knows he won't be able to resist.

“Go.” The word chokes him, catching in his throat, but he thinks of a thousand ghost stories, a thousand legends of restless spirits walking the earth forever, tormented, and the thought of her turning into one of those, because of him... “Go back to wherever you were. Please, N--” He stops himself just in time, shakes his head. "Whoever you are. Please. Just leave."

“I can’t. Not anymore.” She bares her teeth, cold and bright and brittle, more a grimace than a real smile, and her eyes are haunted. “You called me here. You gave me food and drink in this world. I don’t belong in either place, now. I can’t go home. Unless I bring you with me."

"What?" _No, no, this isn't happening..._ But her words make sense, and as much as it pains him to admit it, he's not sure. He can't be. 

"There's a toll to cross the river that way," she says. "Everyone who passes has to bring a soul. I'm already dead. I left mine on the other side. If I'm to cross back, I need to bring yours with me."

"Nuala..."

In the distance, he hears a chime. The bells of a nearby church, ringing matins. He reaches out his hand to her, but she's already fading.

"Too late, this year."


End file.
